New management practices that challenge business as usual

Executive overview

Most organizations run on inherited assumptions — secret salaries, non-compete clauses, annual performance reviews — that feel logical but are undermined by research. David Burkus examines what leading firms are doing instead and why it works.

Three practices get the most attention: pay transparency, dropping non-competes, and replacing annual reviews with frequent coaching check-ins.

The unifying thread across all of them is trust: leaders who extend trust to their people get trustworthy behavior in return.

Pay transparency

• Salary secrecy is a relatively recent cultural norm, not a timeless rule.
• Chaos and jealousy happen in secret pay environments anyway — transparency doesn't introduce them.
• When pay is visible, the conversation shifts from "that person is overpaid" to "is our pay system fair?"
• Transparency is an enforcing mechanism: companies can't ignore inequity they can't hide.
• Transparent firms see reductions in the gender wage gap because disparities become visible and fixable.
• Buffer publishes all salaries publicly, posts the pay formula, and runs a salary calculator at buffer.com/salary — it doubles as a recruiting tool.
• Start with the lowest tier: publish the pay formula or salary grid before revealing individual figures.
• Gradually increase transparency as culture can support it; not every firm needs to go as far as Buffer.

Non-compete clauses

• Non-competes are signed at offer stage, sometimes after the candidate has already left their previous job.
• The intent is noble — protect investment in people and trade secrets — but the data says they backfire at every level.
• For employees: reduced motivation and a feeling of being trapped; also limits leverage for internal raises.
• For firms: when engineers move between companies, patent citations show information flows both ways — the departing employee also transmits knowledge back via ongoing network ties.
• Both firms benefit from talent movement; non-competes suppress that exchange.
• California has banned enforcement of non-competes by state law; this is widely cited as a structural reason Silicon Valley outcompeted Route 128 despite similar early resources.
• Michigan saw engineering talent migrate out after non-competes became enforceable — a natural experiment in the cost of restricting mobility.

Replacing performance reviews with check-ins

• Annual reviews fail on two counts: feedback is too infrequent to change behavior, and formal ranking systems turn development conversations into grade negotiations.
• Adobe replaced annual reviews with check-ins — any conversation that covers expectations, feedback, and growth and development.
• Check-ins take as little as ten minutes and happen monthly; the time saved from annual reviews is reinvested in training managers to coach.
• Adobe's shift started accidentally: a jet-lagged HR exec mentioned it in an interview before the internal conversation had happened, forcing a rapid rollout.
• Their first step was a company-wide conversation: what do employees want feedback on? What do managers want to discuss? Build the system from those answers.
• The custom solution will look different at every company; the starting point is always the conversation, not the framework.

The trust foundation

• All 13 practices in the book converge on the same principle: starting from a position of trust in people.
• Research down to the biochemical level shows that being trusted produces trustworthy behavior in return.
• The best leaders don't manage against assumed laziness; they design systems that invite people to succeed.
• Being a great place to have worked matters as much as being a great place to work — former employees are your next hire's reference point.
• Alumni networks and celebrated departures reinforce that: talent mobility is a feature, not a loss.